BrewDog Acquires Stone Berlin

Just a bit of inside info. Here are the estimated sales numbers for 2018 of top 5 imported beer brands in Germany

1. Budweiser (Budwar) 332,000 HL (Hectoliter)
2. Heineken 254,000 HL
3. Tyskie 252,000 HL
4. Carlsberg 250,000 HL
5. Pilsner Urquell 242,000 HL

Most of these international brands have been in Germany for quite some time with established relationships to distributors and retail alike, and they have established sales teams/importers working in Germany. Stone was set up to produce about 200,000 HL, which was supposed to export to rest of Europe, but one really needs to see the relationship of TOP foreign/import beer consumption compared to domestic (about 95,000,000 HL) to understand that it was clearly over-dimensionalized.

 

Is that Haiku? Close enough for me.

 

Sorry, don't know. Do we know the source of the numbers?

 

One article I read about the train tunnel project in Munich to add a second E-W route downtown, talked of all the delays and cost overruns. It referenced the new main train station in Berlin (finally completed), and the new main airport as examples of how the stereotype of German planning and efficiency is not always correct.

 

Which one? I used to live in Wiesbaden, and have an idea, but not sure.

 

Is number one "Budvar" or the US Budweiser?

 

Really?

First place I ever got to try Budvar was Munich.

 

That's what I figured. I don't recall seeing ANY Budweiser (US Bud) in all three cities I've been to in Germany. Maybe the airport...maybe?

 

My first time living in Germany in 1991 I was staying with my uncle and his family when they were stationed at Mannheim. They lived off base and I almost never went on the base, but I saw lots of American soldiers out in public drinking American Budweiser. Sad.

 

It's probably a bit of a sideshow to the whole "what went wrong" thing, but I wonder whether part of the cultural disconnect was failing to grok that European drinkers are significantly less interested than their American counterparts in schlepping out to a hard-to-reach "destination brewery" when there are a lot of nice, easy to get to bars available...

Yeah, behind all the annoying stunts and attention-seeking there's a fairly solid "Big Craft" type brewery who generally run decent bars. It'll be interesting to see whether they make a better fist of the Berlin location than Stone did, although from what I've seen they're starting out with a lot more of an established market to supply on the continent so the brewing capacity is presumably less of a gamble for them...

 

It is. With a twist. I introduced the form to the poor poetry-deprived Germans back in the early 90s.

 

If it makes you feel any better, I partied with a group of US soldiers from Schweinfurt in 1992 at the Munich Okto -- they were greatly enjoying the Augustiner (maybe it was Paulaner?).

I have the feeling that the Bud you saw in the hands of the Ami soldiers was bought at the PX. Wasn't until a few years later that I remember seeing American Bud in Europe -- maybe @jesskidden knows when it finally took root "over there."

 

BMW is not
subtle like a lime
but it can turn on a dime










turn on a dime

 

Yeah, it'd take quite a while to figure out the chronology of AB's rights to the "Budweiser" trademark in each country around the world. Lots of European countries only allowed them to use "BUD" or some similar variation:

but Germany didn't allow even that (saying it could infringe on Bitburger's "BIT" ) and it was sold for a time as "Anheuser Busch B". Some German BA's might be able to fill us in on the current situation.

 

In WWII the German poets suffered incredibly high casualties to the Deadliest Joke. They couldn't help themselves, like moths to a flame. That tragic loss of poets deprived generations of Germans of not only poetry, but is a major contributing factor to German cultural difficulty at detecting irony/sarcasm today.

 

And after all that...can you BELIEVE they're still writing sonnets? Guess they'll never learn to appreciate innovation like...Ginsburg

 

I see @jesskidden beet me to it

The AB product wasn't sold under the "Budweiser" name -- or even just "Bud" (which I saw in the Netherlands) but just "B" -- I brought back an empty bottle once. The little blurb on the label even said "This is the Anheuser-Busch "B" beer. This beer is produced with the finest care..." We are talking late 90's here, so I don't know how things are currently.

I had my first Budvar in January 1990 at the "Bier Museum" (Weisser Schwann) in Heidelberg. Had the second and third at some forgotten Kneipe in (West) Berlin two days later. And the fourth thru Nth in Prague three days after that. Was sort of the start of my beer geekdom. First wheat beer on that trip as well -- a Crystal Weizen from some forgotten (by me) brewery. Wasn't sure I really liked it, didn't taste like what I though "beer" should taste like But it grew on me. Why I ended up starting to home-brew because there were none readily avail in LA at that time.

 

Even worse: I have a friend from Switzerland (actually the son of a friend -- I'm that old ) who had some friends who worked (civilians) on the US Army base in Bamberg. He would sometimes go visit them for a long weekend and never leave the post. He called it his "American Vacation" and said it was cheaper than a plane ticket. I don't think he drinks alcohol but still. I think maybe once they took him on a walking tour of the Altstadt. For me that would be torture

 

Pick one; they had the same challenges.

 

No it aint...

I lived with the Stuttgart 21 project in my "backyard" for 4+ years.